


Helen

by rants_skellington



Category: Saints Row
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6890422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of moments from across Troy and Dex's not-a-real-relationship.</p><p>Dex had met Troy roughly fifteen seconds after joining the Saints, and had disliked him on sight. Like laser-guided asshole vision Dex had seen him across the church, taken in the shitty goatee (which he still had) and the ugly suede jacket (which he’d thankfully gotten rid of after Johnny had inadvertently set it on fire), and immediately decided he was a dickhead. Dex had not spoken to Troy for a couple of days, inadvertently entering into conversation with him when he’d been looking for Julius. It had been so incredibly instantaneously hostile that Troy was still laughing about it years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helen

Dex grabbed the packet of cigarettes off the table next to the bed and then rolled over onto his back again, accidentally smacking his elbow into Troy’s shoulder when he did. Troy, on the verge of falling asleep, woke back up with a jolt and an irritated grumble. Dex pulled two cigarettes out of the packet, putting one in his own mouth and leaving the other in his hand, only giving Troy a scolding look.

“Is fucking me so boring now that you can’t even keep your damn eyes open?” Dex said.

“Yeah,” Troy said. “Your ass is gonna put me in a goddamn coma.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Troy tried to pull the free cigarette out of Dex’s hand, but he snatched it away, and put it between his lips alongside the other, lighting both. Troy groaned with mock frustration, folding his arms. Dex thought it looked kind of fucking goofy, the way Troy always pulled the blanket up to his armpits like an old man’s trousers. He was a weird bastard sometimes, for a gangster. Chronically uncool and with a stick wedged firmly up his ass, Dex couldn’t have given a long list of reasons why he spent so much time with the asshole. He didn’t even like him – so he had been telling himself since he’d joined this stupid purple gang.

“Give me a cigarette,” Troy complained, reaching over to take one of Dex’s two. Dex moved away, jerking his head back.

“Earn it,” Dex mumbled from between closed lips.

“Where were you earlier?” Troy said. “I definitely earned it.”

Dex snorted with laughter, and Troy leaned over to kiss him gently on the corner of his mouth, and pluck one of the cigarettes from his lips. Dex allowed it, lighting both his and Troy’s cigarettes after Troy lay back down. They lay in silence for a moment, Troy tucked up under blanket, and Dex lazing on the top with one of his legs hanging off the side and the other one inelegantly draped over Troy’s. He was under no obligation to lie neatly in his own damn bed, however much it seemed to inexplicably annoy his insignificant other.

‘Insignificant other’ had become their joke, when the fucking had stopped being a once-off, or a twice-off, or anything they could describe as a series of coincidences with no identifiable pattern. You couldn’t keep having sex with the same guy over and over and pretend that it wasn’t because you really liked having sex with that particular guy. You could try and make that claim, but it would not convince anyone, including yourself, or the guy you were having sex with. But that was just it, just the sex. It was not a _relationship_ , and in their adamance not to label it as one, they had made up a label of their own, like some kind of perverse reverse psychology.

Troy sighed, and Dex measured out exactly fifteen seconds before he asked what was wrong, because he considered loudly sighing a form of very deliberate attention-grabbing, and he wasn’t going to give Troy any more satisfaction than was absolutely deserved.

“What is it?” Dex said.

“I’m just worried about Lin,” Troy said.

“First day undercover in the Rollerz,” Dex said, nodding appreciatively. “Our girl’s tough as hell. She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I know… I dunno. This undercover shit puts me on edge,” Troy said. He took an exaggerated drag on his cigarette. “I hope Julius knows what he’s doing.”

“You’re his right hand,” Dex said, with an identifiable trace of envy that Troy chose to ignore for the sake of keeping the peace. “I should hope you _know_.”

“I don’t know everything going on in his head. He’s doing… Something, alright.”

Troy shook his head, and then slapped a hand on Dex’s thigh, giving his leg a quick squeeze. Dex wasn’t sure if he was trying to be needlessly comforting, and who exactly it was that he was trying to comfort. He wriggled over in the bed to rest his head on Troy’s shoulder, and felt slightly better. It wasn’t that he’d felt _bad_ in the first place, he just felt _better_ like this.

“What do you think of the new kid?” Dex said.

“Hm?” Troy said, on the verge of dozing off again. “They’re okay.”

“Weird.”

“They’re definitely weird. But they do what they’re told, which makes a nice change from you.”

“Fuck you. I do what’s smart.”

“You do what you _want_.”

“And what I want is to do what’s _smart_.”

Troy snorted with laughter. He flicked his cigarette butt away, and Dex glared up at him.

“Hey,” Dex said. “I know you live in a fucking trash compactor, but I keep it clean here.”

“Yeah, yeah. You told me the first sixteen million times.”

“You don’t fucking learn.”

“And I never fucking will. I’m never going to learn anything in my entire life.”

Dex shoved himself away from Troy with an annoyed snarl. Troy just shrugged, not really bothering to hide his grin.

“You’re an asshole,” Dex said.

“If you hated me that much, we wouldn’t have been sleeping together for this long.”

“Don’t test me. I got other options. I don’t have to spend all my time with you.”

“Yeah? Who else you so much as looked at in the last… What, a year?”

Dex was about to fire back with some kind of snarky comment, but realised he couldn’t think of anyone in particular, which slightly killed his mood. He settled on just giving Troy a slightly irritated look, which, with frustratingly predictability, just made Troy grin.

“Me neither,” Troy admitted.

Neither of them said anything else, then. It would have betrayed them both. Dex rolled over and wiggled closer to Troy, laying his head on his shoulder, and letting himself relax. Troy sighed contentedly, and stole the cigarette from between Dex’s lips.

* * *

“What’s up Dex?”

“I know you’re a cop.”

* * *

Dex had met Troy roughly fifteen seconds after joining the Saints, and had disliked him on sight. Like laser-guided asshole vision Dex had seen him across the church, taken in the shitty goatee (which he still had) and the ugly suede jacket (which he’d thankfully gotten rid of after Johnny had inadvertently set it on fire), and immediately decided he was a dickhead. Dex had not spoken to Troy for a couple of days, inadvertently entering into conversation with him when he’d been looking for Julius. It had been so incredibly instantaneously hostile that Troy was still laughing about it years later.

“Where’s Julius?” Had been the only introduction, Dex walking into Julius office and finding Troy sitting on the desk like he belonged there. Dex, being new, had not fully known – or cared – that Troy outranked him. He had only known that he did not like this asshole with the terrible haircut.

“Busy,” Troy said. “The fuck’s that?”

Dex was holding a handful of papers, and Troy snatched them away like a school bully knocking the books out of the hands of the new nerd in school. Dex’s instinct was to try and grab them back, but he just helplessly stood there in his silent outrage. Troy sat, flicking through the papers with one hand and holding a dangling cigarette in the other.

“The fuck is all this?” Troy said.

“Julius wanted to know about Carnales operations in the Row,” Dex said, a touch more aggression than was totally necessary.

“And you made _notes_ ,” Troy said.

“I was being _thorough_.”

“You’re going to climb the ranks through pure pedantry?”

“Where the fuck is Julius, and who the fuck are you?”

It had been a bad introduction. Troy flicked his cigarette into Dex’s face and stepped off the desk. They sized each other up, and Dex had been wondering if Johnny wasn’t the only psycho in the gang when Julius had come in and disrupted their little spat. It had left a bad taste in both their mouths, a dash of unresolved tension that soured the relationship from the start.

In a month they were sleeping together. It had started, predictably, with an argument. Standing in the church with their faces next to each other and their voices raising higher as they bickered in circles over some plans that would eventually be so worthless in the larger scheme of things that Dex wouldn’t remember what they were. Something about not knowing where the Carnales were hiding drugs, how they were getting them into the city. They couldn’t agree, getting angry and argumentative about it for the sake of arguing.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dex said, standing nose-to-nose with Troy, his folded arms in front of him meaning he was both forming a barrier between himself and Troy, and constantly in contact with him. “I grew up here. I know how the Carnales operate.”

“I might not have grown up here,” Troy said, leaning over Dex just enough that Dex had to tilt his head back to look up at him, “but at least I don’t just _decide_ that I’m right because I’m convinced I’m the smartest guy in the room.”

“I’m definitely the smartest guy in _this_ room.”

“Oh, that’s mature.”

“What would you know about being mature?” Dex said, moving his arms down so they took away the barrier. He wasn’t focused, thinking too much about how close him and Troy were, a kind of white noise of thought that buzzed loudly in the front of his mind and made the warmth radiating off Troy’s body a little unbearable.

 “More than you.”

“Old man.”

“You’re cruel.”

“I don’t have to be.” Dex wasn’t really sure why he offered. He was just compelled, in a risky burst of cockiness brought on by a great number of tiny little things, the most prominent being the way Troy’s arms hadn’t stopped brushing against Dex’s side for the last ten something minutes, and Dex couldn’t hide the fact he really _liked_ it.

The suggestion took Troy by surprise. He stopped, considered it, and then smiled in a way that was less dashing and more barely clinging to the endearing side of goofy.

“I knew you didn’t hate me,” Troy said.

“No, I do,” Dex said. “But there’s a lot of wiggle room in that.”

“Yeah, I could show you wiggle – no, shit,” Troy said. “I fucked that up.”

“That was fucking horrible, man.”

“Can we start over?”

“You want to do all the arguing again?”

“Let’s skip to the good parts.”

Kissing Troy was easy. It wasn’t angry, burning passion, where you tried to chew each other’s faces off and clawed each other to shreds. Not that Dex would have turned that down, but this was _fine_. Like finding the shirt that fit you just right, kissing Troy was natural, and effortless. It was like walking the same route Dex always took, waking up to the same skyline outside your window every day, eating at your favourite restaurant. A quick route straight to comfortable, easy happiness, for however long that lasted.

Dex pulled away from Troy, giving the room a quick once-over to make sure they definitely hadn’t be seen. He took Troy’s free hand; the other being on Dex’s hip somewhere under his T-shirt.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Dex said.

“Now you’re talking sense,” Troy said.

They snuck out of the church in the most casual way they could, looking over their shoulders at other Saints and wondering if anyone had seen anything – but surely if someone had, they’d say. You didn’t just stumble in on something like that and keep it under wraps, not if you were as much of a loud mouth as every member of the Saints was.

They brushed by Lin on their way out. She gave them a suspicious look, cigarette dangling from her lips, like she couldn’t figure out why Dex and Troy would be spending any time together at all. It was known they didn’t get on, after all. Why would they possible have anything to do with each other? At least that made it safe that no one would ever guess the truth. As high as Dex’s hopes were for this imminent one-night-stand, he didn’t want everyone in the gang to know about it.

They managed to get into Troy’s car without alerting everyone in a five mile radius to their scandalous fling, both of them on the verge of laughing for reasons neither of them really understood. When Troy pulled out from his parking space and turned the corner, Dex leant over and pressed his lips to the corner of Troy’s jaw. Troy jumped with surprise, jerking the wheel and having to right the car once again.

“Don’t be stupid,” Troy said, not without humour. “You’re going to get us killed.”

“Don’t worry,” Dex said. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

* * *

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Come on, man, who you think you’re talking to? The tactics, the police station thing, your shitty haircut… You got cop written all over you.”

* * *

The bar was crowded, and Dex had to elbow his way inside past the groups of people hanging around the door. The place was upscale, glossy black glass on all the surfaces that did nothing just make the beer rings show up bright clear white. The people around him were dressed like a fucking Impressions photoshoot, in nearly identical high class fashion. But despite the people filling up the room, making the air oppressively loud and hot, he spotted Troy at the bar across the room without much effort. Like his eyes were drawn to him; across the sea of strange faces, each one a spot of so much bright potential, he could immediately make out the tediously familiar. And, resisting the temptation to try and find something new with the same frustrating ease as always, he made his way across the crowded bar to Troy.

Troy didn’t even look at him when he knelt his arms on the bartop, ignoring the sticky patches of spilled beer sucking at the denim of his jacket. Troy just kept staring into his own bottle of beer, face more hangdog than a man who’d just found out he was about to die. Dex, growing quickly irritated, grabbed Troy by the shoulder. Troy didn’t even look up at him, just yanked his shoulder back and made a grunt that was just about audible over the deafening chatter flooding the bar. Or maybe Dex didn’t hear it, maybe he just _knew_ that was what Troy was going to do, instead of expending the effort it would take to speak. Dex snarled below his breath.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He said, right into Troy’s ear.

“Having a drink,” Troy said, deigning to speak.

“Why _here_?”

“Don’t know anyone.”

Dex wasn’t in the mood for this. He took Troy by the arm and dragged him off the seat. Troy was too drunk to be anything but shocked, losing his balance and tipping over onto the floor. Someone laughed, made some joke about Saints that Dex couldn’t hear, and didn’t care about hearing. He just wanted to get out of this fucking yuppie hellhole of a bar where he stuck out like a fucking… gangbanger in a corporate club. Jesus Christ. Troy wasn’t cooperating, lagging behind Dex while Dex hauled him outside like a disappointed parent, or the scolding wife. The anger broiling in his chest was enough to make him feel like he had the power to tear through everyone who was getting in his way, regardless of whatever disadvantage he was at right then. He was ready to tear down buildings.

Outside, the night air was shockingly cold compared to the sweat-drenched air inside the bar. Troy ripped his arm out of Dex’s grip and went to stand with his head bent down, both hands placed on the roof of a car. Dex watched him for a second, picking up on the distant wail of sirens, like the death cry of someone more unfortunate than him falling prey to the biggest predators left in the city. When Troy offered no conversation starters, Dex decided he had enough to say himself to get the ball rolling.

“I can’t find Julius,” Dex said. “He’s missing.”

“He’s fine,” Troy said. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

“He’s dropped off the fucking island,” Dex said. “That’s not _fine_.”

“I know exactly where he is,” Troy said, leaning forwards so he could rest his forehead against the cold metal of his car, arms braced on either side of his head.

“And you’re just not going to tell me?” Dex said.

“You’re not the only one who can hold off on plans until it suits you, Dex.”

Dex could have hit him. He settled for kicking the back tire of the stupid car, instead. Troy didn’t react, just stayed standing with his head pressed into the car door.

“Don’t tell me,” Dex said. “You’re probably better off telling our new boss, right?”

“What are you talking about?” Troy muttered, sounding like the act of continuing this conversation was physically straining him.

“Playa,” Dex spat. “Got promoted to Julius’ right hand. So that’s a demotion for you, and fuck all for me.”

“Probably for the best.”

“How can you _say_ that? We’re supposed to be fine taking orders from someone who can’t even _talk_ for the rest of our time in the gang? Playa never came up with a plan in the ten minutes since they been here. We bust our asses and we don’t even get the _credit_ for it?”

Troy pushed himself off the car – although he was still leaning on it enough to keep himself upright – and looked at Dex with an expression of such disdain that it actually _hurt_ on some level, a level of himself that he didn’t know even cared what Troy thought anymore. He didn’t know if he’d ever cared what Troy thought. He didn’t think, really, that this had ever been a relationship between equals.

“Is that what you’re mad about?” Troy said. “You’re angry Playa got a promotion?”

“Yes!” Dex said. “Why aren’t _you_ angry? Who gives a shit if someone can shoot a gun well? Shouldn’t we be getting some respect for what _we_ did?”

“No one gives a shit about what we did for the Saints and no one ever will,” Troy said, trying to fumble a cigarette out of his jeans pocket and failing to have the necessary level of dexterity. “You can be the cleverest guy in the world, but who fucking cares? It’s a street gang. They just want the biggest, scariest guy in their corner. Julius knows exactly what he’s fucking doing.”

“So I’m just wasting my life in this gang?”

“Probably!” Troy laughed. “I know I did, and you’re _definitely_ a lot smarter than I’ve ever been.”

Dex stepped back from him, finding something about the way Troy laughed slightly revulsive. He didn’t want to talk to Troy anymore, didn’t want to talk to any of the Saints. They didn’t _get_ it, and he found their dumb obedience completely mystifying. How the hell anyone could be happy to be stuck in this shit forever was beyond him, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of what was wrong with Troy.

Well.

He had an idea.

“It’s all going to shit, isn’t it?” Dex said.

“Oh yeah,” Troy said. “We’re all fucked.”

“I deserve better than this,” Dex said.

Troy stared back at him with soulful eyes, struck down with the kind of sadness that made you toxic; like a decaying isotope it just polluted the air around with sadness until everyone was sick of it. Dex was sick of it. He’d had enough, of the furtive, desperate attempts for Troy to hold it together, the late night phone-calls, the way he’d catch Troy, defocused and blank, staring at the church like a dying man who was realising what he saw was an oasis. It was all the same, and Dex was tired of all the same.

“I deserve better than you,” Dex said.

That was the end of it. He realised, once he’d said it, that he believed it too much to ever take it back. It was the truth. He’d had enough of this tiny, ugly little town that he knew inside and out and had always been run by stupid, violent men. He didn’t care about any of it, and anyone in it. It was the first time he realised how insignificant Troy really was, in the grander scheme of things.

* * *

“So what are you gonna do…”

“Nothing.”

* * *

Johnny had been quiet at first, and then furious, throwing his shit around, shouting his head off like if he yelled enough it would make some kind of a difference. There was nothing any of them could do. The universe gave, and it took. Playa had come back to the church still drenched in river water and blood, beaten half to hell, and had numbly shivered there until someone put the pieces together and the truth had, like it always did, come out eventually.

Dex was in shock, but he was doing a better job of hiding it than everyone else. Johnny had ranted and raved about murdering every Roller he could see and then torn out of the building with Playa on his heels to cause some mindless destruction or do something else that silly children did. Dex still didn’t know what to say about the whole thing, so he hoped nobody asked. He was dumbstruck, that was it, so taken aback so far that his words hadn’t followed him.

They’d all known this was a possibility, but at the same time it had kind of seemed like the least likely ending. Lin was tough as hell and twice as fierce, and it was beyond Dex how anyone had managed to get the better of her. He’d never seen Lin even lose a fight – partially because Lin was very, very good at knowing which fights not to pick – and this whole thing was turning out to be fucking absurd. He was still kind of expecting it to not be real, as though her weeping parents hadn’t already identified her body. As though the look on Playa’s face hadn’t told the whole story.

He was in the church because he didn’t know where else to be, and he could almost convince himself he was being useful if he hung around here long enough. Maybe there weren’t that many differences between this and an office job. Less chance of your coworkers being murdered in an office job, probably. Then again, this was Stilwater. Everyone who knew someone who’d been murdered.

Troy hesitated in the doorway before he walked into Dex’s office area, like he was worried about being invited in. He looked haggard, face drawn and eyes tired. Dex just looked at him, waiting for the explanation instead of trying to launch into an investigation of his own.

“I knew it was a bad idea,” Troy said, “sending her undercover. I told Julius…”

“It was a good idea,” Dex said. “Lin knew the risks. We all do, doing this. We needed information on the Rollerz, this just made sense.”

“She _died_. How can it be worth it if she _died_?”

“Sharp is dead, we’re this much closer to taking the Rollerz down. She knew what she was doing.”

Troy shook his head, lighting another cigarette. He didn’t seem that interested in actually smoking it, just wanted to hold it as he shook his head and shuffled from foot to foot. Dex stood up and walked over to him, putting his arms around Troy’s waist and giving him the kind of awkward hug that came from people who didn’t have a lot of practice. Troy leant his cheek against Dex’s head, ignoring the jut of Dex’s cap in his cheekbone. He sighed.

“I never agreed to it,” he said. “I never thought it was a good idea.”

“Then it’s not your fault,” Dex said. “It’s Sharp’s fault. And that motherfucker is _dead_.”

“I hope he’s burning in hell.”

They pulled apart, the risk of getting caught too much for them to let the moment get drawn out. Troy raised his hand to brush his knuckles against Dex’s cheek, and he smiled, somewhere not quite reaching happiness.

“It’s going to be okay,” Dex said.

“Maybe,” Troy said. “For a little while.”

“That’s pessimistic.”

“How long is it going to be before something else gets blown up around here? You can never count on anything in the Row, you should know that as well as anybody.”

“Can I at least count on you?”

In the future, Dex would decide there had been a pause there, a slight hesitation in Troy’s speech that should have been like an early warning sign. In the future, his memory would shape itself so the pause was longer and longer every time he thought about it, so that in his mind Troy’s face performed an entire range of uncomfortable expressions in the full five seconds before he managed to choke out a reply. This was easier for Dex to believe. In reality, there had never been a hesitation at all, Troy’s response had been instant, gut-instinct that was a thousand times more telling of his character than any comically obvious gaps in speech.

“Always,” he said.

* * *

“What?”

“I’m out Troy. I got offered a job at Ultor, I’m dropping my flags and I’m going straight. I just want to make sure that we’re not gonna have a problem.”

* * *

“I just wanted to say something before I left.”

The police chief uniform always felt too small. It strained around his armpits just a little bit, and Troy was sure it didn’t always do that, but that just made him paranoid he was putting on weight. Not paranoid, it was obvious to everyone that he had definitely put on weight. He didn’t do all the ridiculous running around that he had done when he was younger, and now he was defaulting back to himself as a teenager, way before joining the cops, where it was all too easy to pile on pounds and alarmingly hard to shift them. He didn’t actually give a shit, but other people did, and now the uniform didn’t fit, so it was starting to get on his nerves.

Maybe it was just the act of buttoning himself in. Five years he’d been back. You’d think he’d be used to it by now, but sometimes shit just refused to shift from inside your head, and it was like that now. It used to be so much easier, when he didn’t have to wear a tie. Street gangs had their own uniforms, but they were comfier. He hated suits. He hated the stupid little hat. Maybe he could institute a change in uniform – everyone wear saggy jeans and polo shirts. As if he needed to give the department more ammo to use against him to prove he was losing his fucking mind.

Half of Stilwater PD thought he was a hero. Half of it thought he was one page of bad paperwork away from opening fire on his own lieutenants. He didn’t think he was either, it was a pretty awkward binary. He’d have liked a little more wiggle room between _hero_ and _gun-toting psychopath_.

“Are you listening to me?”

Troy looked across the desk at the man in the black suit and the Ultor brand shades and shook his head.

“Not really,” he said.

“Fine, don’t.”

The man in the black suit with the tired eyes dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out under the expensive leather shoes he was wearing. They looked nicer than Troy’s.

“Hey,” Troy said. “I keep it clean here.”

“What are you talking about?” The man shook his head. “I was just doing you the courtesy of letting you know I’m leaving. I don’t know why I bothered. Maybe I was hoping you’d be able to keep your pet gangsters from killing me before I get out of the city.”

“They hate me too.”

“Not as much as they hate me. Playa wants to hunt me to the ends of the Earth.”

“Johnny tried to kill me.”

“Gat’s a fucking lunatic. Don’t take it personally.”

The man in the black suit looked like he’d aged fifteen years in five. He glared at Troy.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“So do you,” Troy said.

“Whatever,” the man said.

He stood up, straightened his own tie – it was made of some kind of steely grey silk and looked like it cost more than Troy’s apartment – and very carefully, deliberately, moved his foot so that it knocked his chair over. Troy did not understand what message he was trying to convey through this.

“I’ve had some bad break ups,” Troy said. The man was already looking pretty fucking displeased, and Troy hadn’t even finished speaking yet. “But none of them ended in death threats before.”

“It wasn’t a break up,” the man said. “We were never dating.”

“Of course not,” Troy said. “My mistake.”

“Yeah. It really was. I have a plane to catch.”

Dexter Jackson walked out of his office, for the last time. He'd already left enough of a mark. Anything more than that would just be cruel.


End file.
